Johannes Brahms, András Schiff

Klavierstücke is András Schiff's survey of the shorter piano works of Johannes Brahms, spread over two discs. It joins the six sets of character pieces that Brahms wrote in two bursts, the Klavierstücke op. 76 (1871/78) and the late cycles opp. 116 to 119 (1892-93), and opens with a two-minute Albumblatt from 1853. Schiff calls the late pieces "the final thoughts of a man in old age". The album follows that inward turn across four decades of Brahms's writing.

The recording was made in March 2021 in the Kammermusiksaal Hermann J. Abs of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, with Manfred Eicher producing and Stephan Schellmann as Tonmeister. Schiff plays a Blüthner grand built in Leipzig around 1859, the firm's largest model at the time, with parallel bass strings and restored by the workshop of Christoph Kern in Staufen. He had already used an 1859 Blüthner for his Brahms concertos. ECM's notes stress the instrument's transparent, singing tone, which suits music this concentrated.

The Albumblatt was written in 1853, when Brahms was twenty, as an entry in a friend's album. Its theme returned twelve years later in the scherzo of the Horn Trio op. 40. The manuscript resurfaced in 2012, and Schiff gave the first performance on BBC Radio 3 that January; here he presents it as a portrait of the artist as a young man. The eight pieces of op. 76 alternate agitated Capriccios with gentle Intermezzi. In opp. 116 to 119 the Intermezzi take over, slow and withdrawn, interrupted by a Ballade and a Romanze in op. 118, until the Rhapsodie that closes op. 119 ends the set at full strength.

The album continues a run of Brahms recordings for ECM. On the Clarinet Sonatas with Jörg Widmann (2020), the Süddeutsche Zeitung heard "a dreamlike symbiosis" between the two players. Of the Piano Concertos with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (2021), The New York Times wrote that "Schiff and the orchestra breathe air and vitality into these pieces." The booklet adds context of its own: Brahms's autographs are reproduced from libraries in Princeton, Hamburg, Vienna and Washington, and Schiff comments on every piece.

Double CD on ECM New Series (ECM 2730/31), released on 18 September 2026, with a liner essay by Peter Gülke (1934-2026) and notes by Schiff, in English and German.